DreamWorks Wiki:Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions about the DreamWorks Wiki. Focus of the wiki The main page states that this wiki is for "everything related to DreamWorks and its work", such as the theme parts, film companies, television networks, films, characters, etc. Initially, we were focusing on the releases by DreamWorks Animation, which includes franchises like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar, but have recently begun adding information on other projects released by the main DreamWorks company, such as the live-action movies like Saving Private Ryan or Real Steel and TV series like Las Vegas and Carpoolers. Many movies and TV series have their own wikis. They are independent from this wiki and may or may not be an affiliate of this wiki. The information on this wiki should not be an exact duplicate of that wiki. In general, this wiki can provide a lot of information or a general overview about a particular subject, and the independent wiki can go into how much details they want. Fan fiction In short, fan fiction ("fanon") is anything you create that isn't seen in any of the movies, episodes or other releases by DreamWorks. A few examples of fan fiction include: :* Cross-overs with other series, such as Doctor Who meeting Po and the Furious Five. :* Expanding on events in the official DreamWorks projects, such as learning more about Gallaxhar's technology by reverse-engineering the probe that was destroyed at the Golden Gate Bridge. :* Creating alternate endings for movies, shorts, or television episodes :* Adding to the "universe" of a movie or TV series, such as Susan Murphy's parents adopting a son. :* Adding yourself to one of the movies or TV series. Fan fiction can be added on our sister wiki, the DreamWorks Fan Fiction Wiki. You will also find a link to this wiki on our main page. For fan fiction on a variety of subjects, including DreamWorks movies and series, go to the Fan Fiction Wiki or FanFiction.net. People that continue to add fan fiction after being notified it is not allowed may be blocked from editing for a while. Normally, this will be a short period of time but can be significantly longer or even permanent if they persist in adding it. Fan art Fan art is pictures created by fans relating to a character, movie or TV series made by DreamWorks. Fan art is allowed on your Profile page, but not in the main articles for the characters, movies and TV series. A few are permitted, but if we see that you are uploading a lot of fan art, especially if they are by different artists than yourself, they may be deleted since this wiki is not a picture hosting site. Categories ''Note: The following may change since it was discovered that the Infoboxes include links to the categories and this is preventing the simplification from being completed.'' There used to be categories for each movie, special and TV series. What happened to them? A lot of these have been consolidated into a new "parent" category. For example, instead of having an Actors category for all three of the Madagascar movies, there is now a single "Madagascar actors" category. There are two reasons for doing it this way: # It makes it easier to type, especially if the auto-suggest function isn't working when you're adding a category. Instead of typing "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted Actors", you just type "Madagascar actors". # The "universes" of each movie franchise are small enough that they can support fewer categories without having an excessive amount of pages in each category, and some of the information repeats. For example, Mike Myers is in all four Shrek movies, the various shorts/special editions, games, etc., so the "Shrek actors" category covers him. For the franchises that do have a larger amount of releases, such as Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar, supplemental categories can be created to even things out. For example, having a "The Penguins of Madagascar characters" category to show the characters that appear in the TV series that may or may not appear in the main Madagascar movies. If necessary, we can switch back to having categories for each individual release, but for now, let's try to trim down the nearly 300 categories we have to a more managable amount. Also, some categories are being replaced by nearly-identical categories, such as "Shrek actors" replacing "Shrek Actors". They are separate because the wiki takes into account the case of each letter, so "A" is different than "a". By having lowercase for the description part of the category (episodes, characters, actors, locations, etc.), it helps make it more distinct. Naming conventions The following information may be moved to a separate page at some point in the future. Page names When more than one page can be created for the same name, the name of the character takes priority. This is because descriptions will refer to the character more than any of the media they appear in. For example, Shrek is the name of a character, movie, video game, book, and the general name for the movie franchise. The page named "Shrek" would be for the character. The rest would be noted by a descriptor at the end, such as "Shrek (video game)" or "Shrek (film)". In this specific case, the book is titled "Shrek!", so that can be used instead of "Shrek (book)". The naming order after characters is as follows: # Movies # Episode titles # Video release titles # Games # Books Capitalization The first letter of any page name is automatically capitalized by the system. The rest of the words should only be capitalized if they indicate a proper noun or a formal title. Examples: "Princess Fiona" or "Treasurer of the Kingdom". Descriptive words should be in lower case. Examples: "Nervous guard" or "Black-striped cat". Minor words Many formal writing styles require every word to be capitalized. However, even on official releases such as the track listing on a CD can be inconsistent as to whether they follow the rule or not, even amongst the songs on the same CD. To avoid such inconsistencies, minor words such as "the", "a", "an" and "of" should not be capitalized. The exception is if they are the first word of a page, such as "The Story of Us" rather than "The Story Of Us". Formatting Titles will be displayed in italics. This includes movie titles, book titles, song titles and game titles. Episode names should be surrounded by quotation marks: "Assaults & Batteries". Quotation marks Since the font used by the wiki is shown at a relatively small size, it can be difficult to distinguish between the different quotation marks. For example ' ` ‘ ΄ ‛ and ’ may all look the same. Or " ˝ “ and ”. Here's what they look like at a larger size: : ' ` ‘ ΄ ‛ ’ " ˝ “ ” Whenever a single or double quote mark is required, whether it's for a quotation, apostrophe or a time or distance measurement, use the standard marks. In the examples above, they are the first characters in the two sections and on a standard English US keyboard, they are located next to the Enter key. Category:Help